The Wine Economist: “(Republic of) Georgia on my mind: Wine tourism’s future in the ‘Cradle of Wine’”

Hundreds of wine experts and industry players from all over the world are gathering in east Georgia this week to attend the first ever United Nations World Tourism Organisation Global Conference on Wine Tourism.

Mike Veseth, a world leading wine author and blogger, and a professor emeritus of International Political Economy at the University of Puget Sound, has penned an article for The Wine Economist that explores three resources he discovered to help readers learn all they can about Georgia, its wine and wine tourism industries.

1) Taber’s Final Frontier

George Taber spent one year circling the globe collecting wine tourism experiences that he chronicled in a 2009 book called In Search of Bacchus. After exploring the more well-known places on any global wine tourism map (Burgundy, Bordeaux, Tuscany) he visited Georgia – which he calls wine’s ‘final frontier’.

Taber had a great time in Georgia, the "Cradle of Wine,” 8000 vintages and counting. He loved the people and culture and was fascinated by the wine, reporting on the traditional wine-making process using big clay jars called Qvervi (which are buried in the earth as shown below) to ferment and store the wine until ready to drink,” writes Veseth.

2) Wine Tourism as Economic Development

A 2012 report by Kym Anderson analyzed Georgia’s wine industry’s potential as an engine of economic development.

Anderson found the wine market quite segmented. Most of the large domestic demand was satisfied by basic traditional wines, a surprisingly large proportion being home-produced. Industrial production of wine for export to former Soviet countries made up a second market segment. Rising quantities of wine are made for export to other markets (including US, Canada, UK, etc), where quality expectations are different than the Russian market and production adjustments necessary,” writes Veseth.

3) Back to the future of wine

Alice Fiering’s 2016 book For the Love of Wine offers an entertaining, informative and deeply personal account of her encounters with Georgian wine and wine-makers, says Veseth.

Feiring is taken by the naturalness of the Qvervi wine-making process and the dedication of those who kept this tradition alive during the long Soviet wine winter … but she worries these traditional wines are threatened by a new foe — those US, UK, and EU markets that seem to demand "me too” wines made in an international style with lots of additives and manipulation.”

The UNWTO global conference on wine tourism is being held from September 7-9 in Georgia’s eastern Kakheti wine region.

Read the full article here: www.wineeconomist.com